Main Market Spaces: Extended target temperature shipping containers systems of the type cater mainly to businesses and institutions that store, ship or transport temperature and time-sensitive products locally and from coast to coast and worldwide. One example of such systems is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0276643.
The clinical testing market is a primary user of such systems which currently use EPS (Expanded Polystyrene) foam insulated shipping coolers. Hospitals are responsible for generating 49% of all clinical test orders but perform only 63% of all tests within their own laboratories. There are an estimated 6,500 hospital labs in the US alone ranging from small and simple to large and complex.
Other users of these containers include hospital laboratories' specimen staging, hospital pharmacies, blood supply, plasma and serum, forensic medical, and organ and tissue storage. These applications extend to military field clinics and hospitals as well as disaster relief support operations.
Test Send Out (TSO): Although usually esoteric, what hospitals actually send out to reference labs is minor in comparison to the overall testing market. Even though it is a relatively minor opportunity, capturing hospital TSO is the one opportunity for virtually every commercial laboratory. The short temperature control time that typical coolers provide has greatly limited the opportunities for many labs to enhance their local logistics and/or expand beyond their markets.
Hospital Test Mix is More Esoteric: Most hospitals perform the more frequently ordered, highly automated, or fairly simple tests in-house. What a hospital typically sends to a commercial lab is usually the more esoteric or complex tests. As a result, hospital TSO often are more expensive, complex tests that need to travel within the right target temperature range.
Clinical Reference Labs: A number of boutique and regional labs have to send the more complex testing to large labs. Their need for controlled target temperature shipping containers is critical especially when time and distance limit their current reach. Comparative testing shows that the performance of the containers of the present inventions triples those of standard EPS coolers with the limited cooling agents dictated by the airline industry. The same hugely improved performance over the same standard coolers when compared to the present inventions triples as well when coolant volumes are unlimited for freezing conditions.
Other: The global presence of many reference laboratories adds to the need for sturdy, economical, green “shippers” that provide longer target temperatures. For example, lab operations in India will require a 48 hours target temperature capability to capitalize on such new markets opportunities. The present invention containers prove to be the perfect carrier for such applications where payload needs to cross continents at safe temperatures.
Medical supplies storage including hospital floor pharmaceuticals, blood, plasma, saline solutions, and others are often a great concern. Large electrical temperature-controlled equipments cannot offer the flexibility of easy-to-carry compact coolers.
Blood banks also have a consistent logistical problem when considerable volumes of blood supply is lost every year because of loss of safe temperature control despite their huge investments in equipment and transit systems. The batching capability of the present invention containers along with their high performance prove to be a unique added storage and transportation capability to all blood and blood related products.
Current Conditions: Current EPS insulated containers typically maintain 32° F. (0° C.) for 24 hours after 5 lbs dry ice evaporate in 18-20 hours. A significant number of specimens are rejected for testing due to specimen thaw. Critical frozen specimens are needed for many coagulation and nucleic acid tests. The same market standard EPS containers perform more poorly when refrigeration temperatures (35-45° F. or 2-8° C.) are needed. This moderately cold temperature environment is often more difficult to achieve even for shorter periods. The disclosed containers of the present invention provide both solutions at triple the time-performance in sturdier, lightweight, recyclable, and green alternatives while maintaining the preferred target temperature range for each application.
Shipping products within target temperatures for extended periods of time is still a challenge. Storage and shipping solutions for products below ambient temperature are a consistently growing market segment of the shipping supplies industry. This growth is driven partly by the need of medical institutions to transport specimens within certain temperature limits to other locations extending their collaborative testing reach. Other medical and pharmaceutical market segments face similar challenges where their preferred target temperature performance needs require prohibitive investments in additional equipment and logistics systems that often render negative return on investment (ROI).
The controlled temperature packaging (CTP) market includes multiple size temperature level segments ranging from larger than pallet (usually cooled by mechanical refrigeration providing days or weeks of temperature control), one cubic foot to a pallet (typically using dry ice or gel refrigerants inside EPS insulated containers limiting cold to freezing temps to 18-24 hours), and less than one cubic foot (a popular however challenging size limited by volume and performance features).
The present inventions respond to the need for smaller containers, providing greatly extended controlled target temperatures time, economically constructed, recyclable, and using self-sufficient passive refrigeration.